Northern black widow spider hand stacked

[MarkSturtevant]

This is from a couple years ago. A neighbor had found a northern widow spider (Latrodectus variolus) in upper Michigan, and she brought it home to show to people. I did the necessary begging and pleading to borrow it for pictures. This is a sister species to the more famous western black widow spider. One difference with northern widow spiders is that the red hourglass is usually broken in the middle.
To create this picture, I took about 10 different pictures at slightly different focal points, and I used Gimp to cut and paste together this picture to create a single picture with a greater depth of field. Why not use stacking? I don't know how to do that, and I don't have the software. Cutting and pasting required me to trim off many hairs along the horizon lines of several legs and across the ventral side of the spider. These were restored by hand with a fine brush tool and other tools to paint them back in.

[Beatsy]

A lot of work, but it doesn't show at all - looks like a straight shot. Nicely done.